Digital technology has changed the face of marketing. As a result, your customers and prospects have come to expect a higher level of product information, marketing campaigns, and targeted communications. Product data is no longer a static piece of information. It’s a rich resource that changes over time, and in response to localized and personalized customer needs.

Improving martech

Technology has developed to provide numerous tools to assist the modern marketer in meeting these expectations. However, working with so many distinct and separate tools has many limitations and inefficiencies, from duplicate data to inconsistencies between departments.

Detailed, fixed-term planning has frequently been touted as a solution to orchestrating these different tools and tactics, but demands are constantly shifting, and so you need to be flexible in your approach. That means being able to respond quickly to change, on all fronts.

Advantages of integration

Almost 81% of respondents to the 2016 Deloitte CMO Survey
said that marketing’s role within the organization over the past five years has broadened. As well as being responsible for the usual areas like brand, social media, and advertising, 61% of CMOs say they’re responsible for lead generation, 66% for public relations, and 55% for competitive intelligence.

Given that these new responsibilities have huge impacts on other departments, notably sales and customer service, it’s imperative that you embrace the true potential of a fully integrated digital marketing platform. By doing so you can not only maximize the efficiency and value of your growing pool of data and product information, but also foster more productive interdepartmental cooperation.

This puts marketing at the center of business strategy, with huge potential for driving growth across the company.

Business growth, fueled by marketing

With product information, marketing workflows, content creation and customer experience all dealt with in one holistic system, you can push the envelope of marketing.

By adopting the latest semantic network technology
in your integrated platform, innovation and agility is easier to achieve. Individuals and teams are able to access the information they need in a single space, and see how it connects with related data, campaigns and teams across the business.

Your branding team can see the latest feedback from customers on new campaigns, sales can see where responses are coming from on social media and content creators can see questions coming in from your audience -- and everyone can quickly refine their output as a result.

Connecting teams, strengthening your culture

Teams and departments can also respond to and feed into the work of their colleagues. They can provide useful input and generate dialogues that foster stronger bonds across the company, creating a unified sense of purpose -- a clear culture that develops with each new development thanks to this evolving network of data.

Putting content and data at the center of your marketing strategy in this manner is something that improves output, unifies teams and departments and drives growth. You can find out more about how this works in practice in our whitepaper A Modern Approach to Marketing Product Information.